Interactive Art Direction & Design

Hello, I’m Craig Forbes. I spend my days living inside Adobe’s Creative Suite and Sketch designing and developing concepts from simple wireframes into elegant live websites. My work has been recognized for excellence by organizations such AIGA and The City Regional Magazine Association. I've received multiple awards through Folio and GD magazines as well. Thanks for visiting.

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Baltimore Magazine Web Redesign

I was enlisted to redesign Baltimore magazine's website in 2017. I focused on optimizing the site for modern devices, playing up the immersive photography and increasing the amount of space devoted to advertising while simultaneously making it less intrusive. The site was designed in Sketch and developed using Zurb Foundation and Craft CMS. Our efforts were awarded top honors by the City Regional Magazine Association the following year.

Seafood Field Guide iPhone App

Our design team at Baltimore magazine thought it would be cool to build an app to accompany our Seafood Spectacular issue even though none of us were app developers. Luckily, the internet has a tutorial for everything so I designed, coded and published the magazines first iPhone app to accompany the issue. The entire package was a CRMA Awards finalist in 2016 (Our arch enemy D magazine in Dallas beat us for top honors).

Vance Astro

As much as I love our digital world these days I miss the experience of interacting with physical music packaging. For this piece I created a fictional artist, Vance Astro, and designed the packaging. The photos are courtesy of NASA's creative commons library.

The Fault in His Stars

For this piece I got to work with stellar illustrator Rory Kurtz. I was inspired by multimedia kiosks at the National Gallery of Art in DC and wanted to add multiple interactive elements to this long form journalism piece. The project was well received and showcased at Folio's 2015 Eddie and Ozzie awards.

The Eyre Affair

Here's another self initiated project. I redesigned Jasper Fforde's cult hit The Eyre Affair. I'm particularly fond of how the serifs in Goudy Old Style mirror the beak and claws of the dodo bird.

Spring Fashion Photoshoot: Behind the Scenes

This piece was envisioned as a high energy teaser for Baltimore magazine's annual spring fashion issue. It was shot it on site and edited it in Final Cut Pro.

Editor's Corner Video

Part of our monthly series highlighting the issue with Editor in Chief Max Weiss.

Robert McClin­tock

I've always described myself as a designer with a strong development toolkit. However, for Robert McClintock I concentrated solely on design and worked with development team at Groove. That partnership led to a beautiful site worthy of the Robert McClintock brand.